Millie and I went out to an early breakfast this morning and let Nick sleep in. We had fancy yogurt bowls which felt more California than Latvia.

We came back and packed up. We have it down to a science now. I can close my eyes and walk the memory palace of my bag. There are a few things I haven’t used that I’m debating leaving somewhere, like my sports bra and yoga pants. We are working on getting Millie to be in charge of all her things.

We drove a short 20 minutes to the Ethnographic Open Air Museum, which is a series of trails connecting very old homesteads to show how Latvians lived between the 17th & 20th centuries. It was like a hiking trail and a museum had a baby. A collab I never knew I needed but loved.

We explored inside windmills, pottery barns (made me realize why the store is called that), store houses, a schoolhouse, and more. All the objects were authentic to the buildings. Some even had records of the people who last lived and worked there.

The weather was perfect. Millie gets a B- for behavior and had a couple of scream freak outs. She enjoyed playing with the old toys at the schoolhouse.

In one area there was a group of people singing what I assume are traditional Latvian songs and dancing.

We got a bit lost on the trail and by the time we got back to the authentic 1600s pub building we were starving. I ordered a warm Latvian goulash soup and they accidentally delivered me a cold pink soup. I took this as a sign from the universe to try it again and I’m glad I did. I know there is a rivalry between Latvian and Lithuanian pink soup — there are even diss tracks between the countries. I am officially team Latvia on this one. It was more creamy, less yogurty, sweeter and tangier from the pickled beets, kind of mustardy, and had more herbs. I finished it this time.

From here we stopped at a very fancy and very overpriced grocery store. It was even pricier than Central Market back at home in Austin. We got just enough stuff for dinner and breakfast.

We drove an hour to our new Airbnb, which is a cabin in the woods. Once again it is very affordable and just heavenly.

We discovered the podcast Story Pirates so we listened to that on the radio while it rained outside and I made some simple pasta for dinner.

After dinner we looked out to see a beautiful bird drinking from the pond in front of the cabin.